There's a lot of Woodward bashing going on in the blogosphere today. I can't really chime in because until his re-emergence as a player in PlameGate, I can't recall reading anything he's written since Watergate. I've never read a book he authored solo. He's largely been a historical figure to me, the reporter who co-broke Watergate through Deep Throat.

Others are more familiar with his work. Arianna rakes him over the coals today for failing to see the story under his nose when writing his book Plan of Attack. Nora Ephron, who was married to his Watergate writing partner Carl Bernstein, provides her view, as does David Fiderer.

John Amato of Crooks and Liars saves his artillery for Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. Jane at Firedoglake takes on Andrea Mitchell. So does Tom Maguire.

I'm just going to read them all and hope to learn something.

I started a post earlier that I didn't get to finish because of an intervening radio interview on Tookie William's clemency petition, that began,

Since Viveca Novak is cooperating with Fitzgerald's probe regarding her conversations with Luskin, for all we know, she is corroborating something Luskin told her or she told Luskin -- or something Rove told Fitz or the grand jury -- rather than attacking it. Unlikely, I know, but still it's one possible explanation.

When I came back to it a few minutes ago, I had all but decided to delete it as being too far-fetched when I got an e-mail from Raw Story asking me if I had seen tomorrow's Washington Post article by Jim VanderHei. I hadn't seen it and now that I've read it, my abandoned post may not be far fetched after all. Vanderhei reports Luskin and Viveca Novak are friends and Luskin asked Fitz to talk to her about something he told her:

Think Progress exposes Bush's U-Turn on Immigration. Undocumented residents are no longer "hard working citizens" in his eyes. They have morphed into "terrorists, drug dealers, and criminals."

CNN has more on Bush's new immigration plan.

Update: Digby, as usual, makes tremendous sense on the issue.

by TChris

The Supreme Court views public high school administrators as the publishers of school newspapers. Freedom of the press, it is said, belongs to those who own the press, and the school administration has a publisher’s right to withhold content it deems contrary to "legitimate pedagogical concerns." The analysis follows a certain logic, but a public school newspaper belongs to the public, not just the school, and we should be concerned when we allow public officials to censor public discourse.

Administrators at the Oak Ridge (Tennessee) High School rounded up all 1,800 copies of the Oak Leaf because -- horrors! -- the student journalists wrote about topics relevant to their lives: birth control and tattoos.

The birth control article listed success rates for varying methods and gave locations where students could obtain contraceptives. The paper also contained a photo of an unidentified student’s tattoo, and [Superintendent] Bailey said the student had not told her parents about getting the tattoo.

“I have a problem with the idea of putting something in the paper that makes us a part of hiding something from the parents,” he said.

It’s a safe bet that the tattoo picture alone wouldn’t have instigated the paper’s recall. (More here and here.)

Raw Story has an article up about Rove's aide Susan Ralston being recalled to the grand jury to testify again about why she didn't log a telephone call between Matthew Cooper and Karl Rove in July, 2003. Raw Story reports Ralston intitially said that the call came in to the White House switchboard rather than Rove's office, but Fitzgerald later obtained documentary evidence that wasn't the case. According to Raw Story, during her second grand jury session, she testified Karl Rove told her not to log that call and others.

However, the bigger news in the article, if true, is this:

Two things are clear, the sources said: either Rove will agree to enter into a plea deal with Fitzgerald or he will be charged with a crime, but he will not be exonerated for the role he played in the leak.

Notre Dame professor Phil Gasper interviewed Stanley Tookie Williams by telephone a few days ago. He talks about his redemption, why gang life grabs hold of kids and how the death penalty has become a pawn of politicians.

You can write to governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (governor@governor.ca.gov), or call him in Sacramento (916-445-4821), and implore him to grant clemency. [Via Counterpunch and Justin E.H. Smith.] More from Smith:

I have emphasized repeatedly in this space that the details of a particular death-penalty case should not matter so much in our opposition to it. Whether the person executed is mentally deficient or a genius, whether the crime was premeditated or an act of fleeting passion, whether the prisoner denies the crime or admits it, the death penalty is always and equally a perversion, a malignancy, and it by itself ensures that the United States will remain outside of the civilized world, behind Turkey, Turkmenistan, Cambodia, and Liberia, but in good company with China, North Korea, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

by TChris

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking freely on the company he kept:

• President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning.

• Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard." (Tough choice.)

by TChris

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham entered guilty pleas today to bribery and tax evasion charges. TalkLeft background on the Dukester is collected here.

Asked by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns if he had accepted cash and gifts and then tried to influence the Defense Department on behalf of the donors, Cunningham said, "Yes, your honor."

U.S. Attorney Carol Lam said the Dukester "did the worst thing an elected official can do -- he enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there." (If only violating our trust were a federal crime ....) Cunningham also announced his resignation from Congress today, reducing the ranks of the indicted in that body by one.

by TChris

With two defense lawyers murdered and another wounded, the team defending Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants asked for another continuance of Hussein's trial, which sputtered to a brief start today before being adjourned to December 5.

Hussein complained about walking up four flights of stairs in shackles (repairing the elevator is still on the Iraqi government's "to do" list) before, with characteristic bravado, he challenged the judge to do his job more forcefully.

Fitzgerald is interested in Luskin and Novak's conversations from May, 2004 forward. What happened in May, 2004? On May 21, 2004 Matt Cooper was subpoenaed . The next day Time said it would fight the subpoena. This is the subpoena that was directed to a certain official who later was revealed to be Scooter Libby.

...prosecutors asked Time a week ago to cooperate but the magazine declined to do so....Fitzgerald wants to question Cooper about a story that appeared in Time on July 21, 2003, and another that ran on Time's Web site on July 17.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals decison (pdf) upholding the subpoena contains these dates:

On May 21, 2004, a grand jury subpoena was issued to appellant Matthew Cooper, seeking testimony and documents related to two specific articles dated July 17, 2003, and July 21, 2003, to which Cooper had contributed. Cooper refused to comply with the subpoena, even after the Special Counsel offered to narrow its scope to cover only conversations between Cooper and a specific individual identified by the Special Counsel. Instead, Cooper moved to quash the subpoena on June 3, 2004. On July 6, 2004, the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia denied Cooper’s motion in open court, and confirmed the denial with reasoning set forth in a written order issued on July 20, 2004.

Jane and Reddhed at FiredogLake provide some intriguing theories on why Patrick Fitzgerald has subpoenaed Time correspondent Viveca Novak.

Reddhed writes that Fitzgerald may be trying to pierce Rove's attorney-client relationship with Luskin through statements Luskin made to Novak with Rove's consent.

Jane recaps some theories provided by their readers: Luskin may have been using Novak to pass information to Cooper in an attempt to influence his testimony; and this one:

On Meet the Press Sunday, two Washington Post reporters acknowledged being baffled and embarassed by reporter Bob Woodward's actions in failing to disclose his involvement in the Valerie Plame leak investigation to his editor for more than two years.

Arianna takes Russert to task for following the standard playbook and failing to follow through on the bigger issue:

It was a great opportunity for Tim to look at the broken conventions regarding confidential sources and the broken trust between the public and the press.

But instead, Tim went right back to the old playbook and the old problem: "Every source I believe is going to want complete assurance that if I give you this information, will you refuse to testify even if it means going to prison." Stunning though it may seem, Russert really believes that the main problem raised by Judy Miller's and Bob Woodward's roles in Plamegate is: how does the press repair the damage done between journalists and anonymous sources?

The critical question, Arianna says, is under what conditions should the press guarantee anonymity?